Challenge #1: I am a city kid, I didn't test things I found on the river bank floor as a kid, they were likely polluted. The river was the closest thing I had to a woods near my house. It was three blocks away, but provided a good spot to get away sometimes. So, I felt a little envy while researching sorrel and learned that one woman had eaten this off the forest floor as a kid, and made her friends eat it, and didn't know until she was older what it was. Now I've learned that it is similar to spinach, but its not really(more on that later).
So, where to get this stuff? I look at Meijers, they usually have most of my questionable stuff. But they were taking down the herb display and had oregano and rosemary left when I came through. I wanted to scream. Being it was a friday night after work, I nearly did. I went to midland and checked there-I needed to buy Jelly-Belly's for pacifiers to top the cupcakes for the baby shower. I started looking online, thinking this might be special order since its not winter here. I found very few suggestions and combed Meijers produce department again. Finally, this afternoon, during my third trip to a Meijer this weekend, at my very own Mount Pleasant Meijer, they have the herb rack back up, and I find the most expensive sorrel the above mentioned blogger I was envious of would never have paid for. But I'm on a mission and this recipe was still relatively affordable-another first for an Emeril recipe;-).
Challenge #2: The sauce calls for a dry white wine. I could use a cooking wine, but real wine gives a better flavor. However, I drink reds, not whites. I'm not sure which ones are dry much. I just know not to buy Table wine, these are usually sweeter. I found a nice Reisling I had been surprised by before. I picked that one out, but decided to see if Meijer's book section had a simple little black book of wines, or wine demystified there. They actually had a Wine Bible by someone who understood much more about wine than I ever will. It was somewhat overstimulating in all of its info, and might have been considered a wine encyclopedia. However, I did find a small section with the info I needed, by luck as much as not. And it suggested a Sauvignon Blanc for a dry cooking wine. Since I believe the Riesling tends to be a bit sweeter, I switched my wine choice to Sutter Home Sauvignon Blanc. Next time, I'm curious to see how the Reisling tastes.
After all the work to find the sorrel and pick out the wine, and to figure out how to quarter this bird, I think the roasting was the easy part. Last time I roasted a chicken, I left the bird whole and cut off what we needed. This time, I asked the meat counter at Meijer and they refused due to cross-contamination issues. It made me wonder if they wash their surface after every cut. Since they didn't have any pre-quartered birds, which I mentioned, I brought home the whole bird. James had originally offered to quarter it for me, but I didn't yet have the sorrel and didn't plan to cook it that day. I decided to attempt to do it myself. This didn't go quite as easy as I'd hoped. I called James for advice. It sounded like what I was doing, but I made him come over and help anyways. He was so supportive when he told me I had most of the cut made for him. I realized as I heard popping, I just needed to apply some more pressure. He proceeded to cut up some onions for me, then went back home to rest. He'd had a long day and he was sore.
I chopped the sorrel and added it to the butter then rubbed it all over the chicken and under the skin. I added the onion to the mix and the thyme with lemon zest as I did not find lemon thyme for this.I quartered the lemon and piled this and garlic cloves atop the chicken quarters as well as the onions and some of it around it. I thought it would add to the flavoring of the chicken better than packing it around. However, if you want crispy skin, you need to pile around not on the chicken. I then cooked the chicken for about 40 minutes and began to make the sauce while the chicken was resting.
I added the butter and the shallot to the pan, and heated the shallot, not letting it turn brown. I then added the wine and began to let it reduce. I'll be honest here, as I smelled the wine while cooking in the sauce, I wasn't sure I had chosen the right wine, or that I shouldn't have used something else. I could still smell the flavors after adding the heavy cream. Once I added the sorrel and spinach and lemon juice, as well as the chicken pan drippings, the sauce smelled much better. I nearly burned myself trying to get them out of the roaster. Oh well, wouldn't be the first time.
Note about sorrel: once I got it home I did taste it. It did not taste like spinach. It wasn't nearly as bitter. It was more like a Boston lettuce without as much water content and a crisp refreshing apple zing to the aftertaste. I thought it very nice and will be adding sorrel to our herb garden this year.
I did leave out the tarragon. James and I have pretty much determined we just don't care for tarragon. I think it would work very nicely with the flavors in this recipe, which complemented each other beautifully, but tarragon is just not something we like enough to include in most recipes.
I will definitely make this recipe again. James and I may have a new favorite. And its not terribly hard either, once you get the chicken quartered. For that, James suggested the pick of the chicks, in which case he knows each piece of chicken will get its own clove of garlic;-).
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